Doofus
by Aoi Shoudou
Summary: A slightly caffeine-wracked Leon visits the Count, and...Well, if you know anything about the manga, you should know that unspeakable terrors await. Rated PG-13 for Leon's naughty mouth.


Doofus  
(also titled The Dangers of Caffeine Pills)  


  
A/N: I don't like how so many people on ff.net title their Petshop of Horrors fanfic with just one word that begins in D, because when I do it, it just doesn't feel as clever. Life is cruel.  
  
  
  
  
  
Leon had insisted on seeing where Count D concocted his dazzling array of drinks and sweets. The Count, ever reluctant to allow any blithering idiot to look through his expansive pet shop, finally acquiesced to the demand and escorted Leon into a back room that the detective had never really noticed before. Much like the other rooms of the shop, it was a splendidly decorated affair, though far brighter. It was rendered in almost entirely light colors, with sparkling white marble floors and countertops, and cabinets in the very faintest shade of blue. Leon squinted at first at this sudden contrast in brightness, but quickly made himself at home in the kitchen; in fact, he took it upon himself to make a pot of tea instead of allowing Count D to do it again.  
"Detective," he warned him, "I am willing to believe you have never made tea before. It is a very delicate process, and it is likely to taste...less than desirable."  
"Better than the crap you force down my throat!" exclaimed Leon with characteristically testosterone-fueled zeal as he charged towards a random row of cabinets. "I'm going to make a real man's cup of tea! Now where do you keep the soy sauce around here?"  
"Detective! You don't put – " but his cry of admonition was quickly stifled as Leon plowed through the shelves in search of ingredients for his manly tea. He just sighed and waved his hand in defeat. "Very well. Make your tea. I must go tend to the piranha."  
"Whoa, you keep piranha around here?" replied Leon, surprised at Count D's choice of exotic fish, but he had already left the kitchen. He simply shrugged his shoulders and returned to the hunt.  
"Hm...Banana extract...Garlic...Raw hamburger...good, good..." Leon gleefully set the three ingredients aside. Looking in the dark, cobwebbed back of the cabinet, he pulled out a tiny little bottle of white sand. "Powdered rhinoceros horn?" he exclaimed, tracing his finger over the label with a look of confusion on his face. "What the hell? Ah, that can go in too." He put it aside. "D sure keeps some weird shit in this place..." He returned to the cabinet and with a gleeful gasp and a final flourish he withdrew a bottle of brandy. "Jackpot, baby! Well, that'll do it!" Practically skipping from destination to destination, Leon seized a large stainless steel kettle from another shelf and filled it with hot water. He wasn't terribly sure why he was so excited about something as simple and mundane as making tea, but perhaps it was just the overbearing, childish eagerness to try out something new. He put in a teabag, tossed in liberal amounts of his special ingredients, and slammed the kettle on the stove. There it promptly boiled and Leon sat down and watched his prized creation with starry eyes.  
Count D returned, hands wet with salty water (a fact that, upon audible announcement, caused Leon to burst into juvenile giggling) and gave the giddy detective a look of deep-seated disconcertion.  
"What has gotten INTO you today," mused D rhetorically, but Leon was more than happy to answer without so much as a pause in between words.  
"I've been working on a report nonstop and haven't slept for two nights and Jill gave me some caffeine pills to keep me up and – "  
Count D stopped him with a finger lifted to his scarlet lips and a disapproving shush.  
"Well, Detective, you will need to have a talk with her and explain why it is never a good idea to give a man like yourself enormous amounts of caffeine." Count D then noticed the bags hanging under Leon's eyes and the perceptible lethargy in his movements. He would have felt sorry for him, had his dear co-worker not wired him on enough caffeine pills to give an elephant a heart attack. Without another thought he strode over to the cabinet to assess the damage done.  
"Hm. Where's the hamburger gone..." he murmured, but was interrupted by the familiar screech of the kettle. Leon leaped up and strode over to his pride and joy and, without a single word of forewarning, seized the sides of the kettle in his hands.  
Never in his years of keeping a pet shop had Count D heard any animal scream as loudly as the Detective did.  
D whirled around, alarmed by the clanking of the full kettle on the stove and the detective's primal roar, to find Leon sprawled on the clean marble, his hands a wild shade of red and his face contorted in some chilling mask of pain and rage.  
"Shit, D!" he screamed. "WHY didn't you tell me the kettle would be hot?"  
He wasn't entirely sure why, but the sight of Leon Orcot lying on the ground with raw red palms and fingertips, crying and screaming obscenities, was the funniest thing that he'd ever seen in his life. After a year of the detective's constant foolish instructions, such as "D, don't jump in front of that tiger!", "D, don't touch that stray, you don't know where it's been!" and "D, don't break into the sweet shop!", he found it highly comical that Leon should finally meet his match in an unexpectedly hot kettle of tea.  
"Oh, Detective..." cooed the Count, but then as he looked at Leon lying on the ground, a victim of the rare fate of tea burning, he could no longer suppress his laughter. It was something Leon had never heard before, but a lot like what he'd have expected from him: a low, subdued, unctuous laugh. "Detective, generally when placed on a stove for five minutes steel objects become hot." He then continued laughing, a little more loudly than before. "Now HOW did they let you become a narcotics officer in one of the nation's most prestigious police departments when you can't even make tea?"  
"D...get me...some bandages..."  
As D strolled off to retrieve his first aid kit, Leon distinctly heard him say, "Well, at least you're not energetic anymore."  
  
The two later converged at one of D's short little tea tables, both hunched over glasses of Leon's mysterious brew. Simply the smell was enough to repulse Count D, let alone actually trying to taste the muck, but Leon had already downed four glasses of it.  
"...and so I says to Jill, I says, 'what are you talking about? That bitch is DEAD, baby!'..." And without another word, Leon, his bandaged hands fumbling about with his fifth glass of tea, collapsed to sleep on the couch. His delicate china cup hit the rug with a soft thump. Q-chan yanked at his hair but to no avail; the detective was far-gone into Dreamland.  
"Q-chan," drawled Count D, stretching out a finger for the little creature to perch on, "remind me why I associate with this moron."  
"Kyu kyu kyu."  
"Ah yes, that makes perfect sense. Thank you, Q-chan."  
And with that, just as soon as he had drifted to slumber, Leon awoke. He looked no more rested than he had thirty seconds before, but instead...D couldn't discern what he looked like, but it made him a little uncomfortable.  
"D..." he muttered, and rose from his finely finished chair. He strode over to the Count, lethargy still written in his movements, and leered at him with squinted and vaguely frightening eyes.  
"Holy shit."  
"What is it, Detective?"  
"D, you're...HOT."  
The Count edged away surreptitiously. "What ARE you talking about, Detective?" Q-chan rose from his finger and glared menacingly at Leon.  
"Well...whoa...I never noticed before...Man, you could give some of those girls down at the strip club a run for their money..." He hiccupped loudly. Count D took Leon forcefully by the hand and sat him down on a nearby couch. The Count himself sat a fair distance from the detective and continued his interrogation.  
"Detective, are you feeling quite alright?"  
"Well, sure! When you put brandy in your tea the whole world is wonderful!" Leon replied punctually with a loud hiccup. He then averted his eyes to the rather confused Count, and began to edge closer to him. Alarmed, Count D crawled on his back to the edge of the couch. Q-chan quickly accosted Leon by yanking at his shirt, but he would have none of this. No flying rat would stand in his sexual stomping ground. Leon grabbed Q-chan and hurled him to the floor, where he hit the rug with a sickening crunch. Count D gasped and turned quickly to the figure of his beloved crony.  
"Q-chan! – AH! Detective!" Leon had quickly crawled on top of him, eyes still drawn into a half-open squint. He cocked his head sleepily to the right and drawled in a half-drunk half-sleeping stupor,  
"Unnnh...D...Give Daddy some REAL sugar..." Count D yelled and pushed Leon off of him, sending the deluded detective crashing into the tea table. Fruit tart and disgusting tea-stew hurtled through the air, and a neatly sliced portion of chocolate cake fell upon the twitching form of Q-chan.  
"Detective, leave this shop at once." With this harshly spoken ultimatum, a multitude of glaring red eyes peered out at Leon through the darkest recesses of the shop, and drunk or not, anyone knows that is an indicator of trouble.  
"But don't you wanna get down and dirty – "  
"LEAVE." This command stirred the creatures even more, and they began to growl at Leon, who was getting the hint a little slower than he should have. Before he could take even one step back, however, Totetsu had emerged with his goat teeth bared. More than familiar with the sight of that foul creature, Leon turned on his heel and ran, but not before Tet-chan had seized hold of his leg from behind.  
"AAAAH SHIT! D! GET YOUR DAMN GOAT OFF OF ME!" he screamed, trying to pull the goat off of his leg with his bandage-swathed hands. Count D merely glared at the anguished detective without so much as a gesture of sympathy.  
"And that, my dear Detective, is the price of coming on to me while hopped up on caffeine and drunk on brandy-spiked tea. Have you learned your lesson?"  
"YES D I HAVE NOW PLEASE GET THE GODDAMN GOAT OFF MY LEG!" Count D chuckled to himself, a bemused sadism lining his silky voice, and summoned Totetsu to him with well-spoken words of adoring praise. Leon, who now bore three wounded extremities, whimpered and clutched his leg.  
"D...go get...the bandages again..."  
  
Leon's leg may have been wrapped tightly, but all of the gauze in the world could not cease his bleeding dignity. He was now standing on the stairs leading to the petshop exit, and Count D was safely positioned a few steps away from him. With Q-chan in a full body cast perched on his shoulder and a sleeping Tet-chan wrapped in his arms, the Count begged one more question of Leon.  
"Detective...what exactly did you put in that tea besides brandy?"  
"Ah...Raw hamburger...Garlic...Banana extract... and some of that rhinoceros horn shit."  
"Oh dear."  
"What?"  
"Detective, those are all aphrodisiacs."  
Leon blinked. "Afro-whaaaa?" Count D merely groaned and shook his head.  
"Foods that...um, arouse you, Detective."  
Leon just blinked again. "Food can do that?" and with this he gave another loud hiccup.  
"Yes, Detective."  
There was a moment of silence.  
"Are you SURE you don't wanna get down and dir – " Count D merely shook his head, put down Tet-chan, ushered Leon out of the shop with a surprisingly forceful push, and slammed the ornamental doors shut without another word.  
  
  
  
  
  
A/N: Hm. That was random. Ah well. I really need to stop writing fanfiction at 3 in the morning, but hey. Do leave a review so that I know my insanity is not completely wasted. =) 


End file.
